According to a poll for the City of London, 31% of British adults now grow their own food, while 64% of those interested in growing their own say they would do it to save money.

The City of London is launching a £2million grants programme to promote the use of green spaces and encourage people to grow their own food through volunteering and community involvement.

In our home town local volunteers encourage planting of veg in local green spaces, window boxes and raised beds. The Incredible Edible Hoylake scheme encourages locals to help themselves to fresh produce that can be picked from veg boxes in places such as the local train station.

I’m carefully nurturing some tomato and courgette seeds at the moment …the little fellas will be ready to plant out soon. In our back garden there’s a little rosemary plant that we’ve started pick to add a little something to roast spuds. Add a couple of sprigs of rosemary along with a few garlic cloves to your roasting tin of Maris Pipers and you’re good to go!

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Growing Your Own? One in six of us are

Other kitchen gadgets listed in the PriceRunner research report include:

• soda drinks maker (the Sodastream ones do look good though)
• melon baller
• ice cream maker

On the flip side, an espresso maker sees a lot of action in many kitchen and offers value for money as does a garlic press. Despite costing around £400 the Apple iPad is also good value for me money because the device is used so often.

We’ve got a chocolate fondue set in the back of a kitchen cupboard that we’ve never even opened! It was gift that was well received but our good intentions have proved to be just that.

How about you? What kitchen gadgets and utensils do you have that are just lurking at the back of a drawer or cupboard?

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The most useless gadget: A fondue set

I find that a large mixing bowl works best to work in the oats with a wooden spoon. Any old rectangular baking tray will suffice – or heck, treat yourself to one of our lovely non-stick ones.

The flapjack recipe below is quite flexible in that you can swap margarine for butter if you like yours rich and rather than 50/50 white and brown sugar try just brown.

Keep the flapjacks in an airtight container for a couple of days and they become lovely and sticky with a crisp top. Very moreish. Awesome

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Recipe: Flapjacks

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Recipe: Chocolate Biscuit Cake

I do like these serving come chopping boards by French product designer Véronique Maire. Her collection of four boards has been produced for the the French Collective y’a pas le feu au lac and was displayed at last month’s French Design exhibition. The wooden boards have slight gradients allowing them to be used as serving boards with a retaining edge or as traditional chopping boards.

Pictured above are three of the four chopping boards with the complete set described as:

The Mini which, for example, allows you to place a glass as well as some peanuts.
The Simple, a real chopping board for the kitchen.
The Double which will allow to display two types of amuse-gueule.
The Triple “Y” for a homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule.

Nope, I didn’t know that amuse-gueule means a single, bite-sized hors d’oeuvre either.

Feel free to browse our store for other wooden chopping boards.

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Les Planchas: Serving / chopping boards

A study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago monitored over 700 volunteers with an average age of 82. Participants wore a device that monitored their day-to-day activity. During the three year study 71 of the volunteers developed Alzheimer’s and researchers concluded that the least active were more than twice as likely to develop the disease than those who were most active.

The study concurs with one undertaken by Bangor University that indicated that baking can reduce the onset of dementia. Dr Aron Buchman said:

“The results of our study indicate that all physical activities including exercise as well as other activities such as cooking, washing the dishes and cleaning are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Agreeing that exercise is a well-established way of reducing your risk of developing dementia, Dr Anne Corbett, research manager at the Alzheimer’s Society commented: “[As] this shows, there are things you can do to help reduce your risk. Eating a Mediterranean diet high in oxidants and oily fish and even the odd glass of red wine can also help.”

What do you think? Do you have any anecdotal evidence that spending time in the kitchen improves a persons sense of well-being or improves the health of someone suffering from dementia? Have your say below. And don’t forget to visit our store to browse and buy from our range of cookware and bakeware.

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Time in kitchen can cut Alzheimer’s risk

Since King George III’s coronation in 1761, officials in Abingdon, Oxfordshire have thrown currant buns from the roof of its County Hall to mark special, Royal or national occasions. The currant buns (as pictured with butter mmm) are sometimes to as ‘Rejoicing buns’. I don’t quite know why someone decided to throw buns from a roof top a couple of hundred years ago but Abingdon Museum explains more.

This Saturday, the inaugural World Bun Throwing Championships were held and the two winners were winners were Selina Wallis with a 29.7m (97.4ft) throw and Danny Parry with 57.8m (189.6ft). For an excellent report of the championships, along with several in-action photos do read Richard Gottfried’s  blog.

It strikes me that the younger competitors had the best idea. The Mayor of Abingdon, Michael Badcock, said: “Some of the younger contestants decided to eat their buns rather than throwing them but that didn’t matter, it was a great day and a lot of fun.”

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Abingdon bun throwing championships

Rochelle, 23, is engaged to Marvin Humes, also a singer in boy band JLS (official web site). According to the photo their wedding date is 19, October 2012 (note the date in the photo is American month-day-year format).

At time of writing the photo has received 2,099 ‘likes’ so it would seem that fans of the groups approve.

Personally, I can’t say I’m too fussed on either group but our own girls like their music so I’ll have to tell them the exciting news!

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JLS and Saturdays stars announce wedding day in cutlery

Lipton was founded in 1893 by Sir Thomas Lipton as a New Jersey based tea packing firm. The tea was almost an overnight success in America and the country became Lipton’s biggest market. Today, many of us associated Lipton with their iced-tea drink. Noble Fleming was a friend of Sir Thomas Lipton’s parents and he secured the position and the senior tea taster.

Fleming and his team studied the “tone” of the tea leaves by placing them in white bone china cups, pouring an exact amount of skimmed milk and then in a similar fashion to wine tasting, would stir, sniff, sip and gurgle the tea. Fleming would then select the tea leaves he felt should be bought at auction for Liptons.

For further background on how Twinings taste tea take a look at this page.

It is reported that Fleming always attended the tea tasting sessions in a well-tailoried suit and the tasting sessions were conducted as if each were a ritual steeped in custom. Chrome-plated spittoons were used by Fleming and his team to collect the gurgled tea.

Fleming retired to France in 1983 and is survived by a daughter.

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Noble Fleming: Acclaimed tea taster passes away

How’s this for a real cookbook …a lasagna recipe book that’s made from fresh pasta and is ready to cook!

The pasta pages of the book are inscribed with the recipe for classic lasagna and are used as the pasta layers for the dish. Just add the remaining lasagna ingredients and stick in a pre-heated oven and then enjoy with a glass of red! I presume the freshly-made sheets have been rolled in a pasta machine and then the recipe has been letter-pressed into each pasta page.

The edible cookbook was designed as a special project for a large, German publishing house that specialises in culinary and art topics.

source

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Edible cookery book for lasagna recipe